My son recently bought himself an inexpensive camera and has “suddenly” developed an interest in stop-motion animation. He’s been filming a series of short animations featuring his main character, Joe, in a number of situations, some of them unfortunate (an elephant walks over him; he gets attacked by giant spiders). Joe always turns out okay, though, demonstrated by his signature bow at the end of all the sequences.

Rudimentary in structure and decidedly non-educational in content as these first forays are, I wouldn’t want to kill my son’s enthusiasm by attempting to get him to make his creations more instructive (eg. Joe as Crispus Attucks getting mowed down by a bunch of Lego guys as British officers at the Boston Massacre). I think I’ll just see where his imagination leads and find some material that may help him to develop his interest further if he likes.

Coincidentally, I recently came across a site that provides free lessons and suggested projects for kids using different forms of digital media. At Adobe Youth Voices, there are lessons for audio and video production, digital photography, graphic and web design, print production (which includes things like book publishing and creating posters), and a section on how best to showcase your work. There’s also a section on animation, and one of the subcategories is stop-motion animation. There’s a stop-motion handout with some tips about the process, a video tutorial and some project ideas that look like they could be helpful.